Zenith

ICT4D Week 2018

Friday, October 21, 2016

The President of HomeGrid
Forum (HGF), Donna Yasay, has identified certification as critical for
Internet-of-Things (IoT) interoperability success, reports ITRealms.

Speaking at a panel of technology peers at IoT Tech Expo
in North America on how certification programmes are at the forefront of
interoperability, said it’s the answer for vendors looking to keep up with
today’s growing industry for smart home innovation.

“To ensure multi-vendor interoperability, accredited industry
certification programs should be used for every product to provide credibility
and quality assurance for retail and carrier based customers looking
to add ever increasing numbers of devices to the home network,” commented Yasay.
“The successful global adoption of the Internet of Things is dependent on a
robust and secure home network,” Yasay said.

Yasay also noted that however at the same time there is a
growing need for much faster in-home networks.

Buttressing her point with a recent iGR report,
she pointed out that it showed average monthly
broadband usage in the United States (US) homes is 190 gigabytes per month,
with more than 95 per cent of this traffic being video.

In addition, she said that Juniper Research recent study
which showed that 4K Over-The Top (OTT) adoption is set to rise from
2.3 million users globally this year, to 189 million by 2021.

This, she said, translates to 1 in 500 US residents currently
watching 4K online, but by 2021, it will be 1 in 10, a massive increase in
access and in-home bandwidth.

She further said that the beauty of G.hn is that it could
provide a single in-home network that meets the needs of both IoT applications
and ultrafast video.

“G.hn technology can provide seamless wired connectivity or a
backbone for multiple wireless access points and IoT devices to
greatly improve the wireless coverage within a home,” she explained.

Pointing out that today’s average household has advanced from
having one user watching the occasional video on YouTube, to several users
watching whole television series independently and simultaneously, using
platforms such as Amazon Video and Netflix.

“G.hn is now widely regarded as the obvious choice for reliably
delivering high bandwidth services and applications, and will increasingly be
used to help connect IoT devices. This can either be as a backbone
for low-speed wireless IoT technologies, or embedding the powerline
variant of G.hn in large, fixed, mains-powered devices such as washing machines
and refrigerators,” she said.

Therefore, interoperability, she said, is key to both these very
different applications, stressing that HomeGrid Forum thus provides G.hn
silicon and system certification through a strict compliance and
interoperability testing programme to ensure the simplest and most secure
means for consumers to connect their increasing number of devices and
applications using the home network.